On February 28th, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) attempted to raid the Mount Carmel Center ranch in Axtell, Texas, which was home to the Branch Davidians (a sect of the Shepherd’s Rod/Davidians who are themselves an offshoot of the Seventh-day Adventist Church) as they believed that the cult were stockpiling weapons and modifying them to have automatic fire capability. Four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians died during the initial raid. What followed was a 51-day siege which ended in the deaths of 76 members of the cult, including the leader, David Koresh, and several children. The compound burned to the ground after fires were started by Branch Davidians in three separate places. It is interesting to note that the grounds on which US Attorney General Janet Reno urged President Bill Clinton to allow her to raid the compound were that Koresh was sexually abusing children. The FBI Hostage Rescue Team later said that there was no evidence of child abuse discovered; either during the standoff or subsequently.

After stand-off at Davidian compound in Waco, Texas on 19 April 1993 .

As a British person, I find the all-too-frequent instances of mass-shootings and gun-related atrocities across the pond equally heart-wrenching and fascinating. The victims are almost always those who never handle guns in the first place – in the Waco Siege, these included children and the (presumably) peaceful majority of Branch Davidians who had been brainwashed by Koresh and his associates. I could get very political here, and rant and rave about how the positive correlation between gun ownership and innocent people getting shot is blindingly obvious, but I will refrain from doing so. I will, however, point out that on March 13th, 1996, Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and one teacher at Dunblane Primary School near Stirling in Scotland before taking his own life. Within a year, the government had passed the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997, severely restricting gun ownership in the United Kingdom; these laws were further tightened later the same year. Since then, there has been one single mass shooting (in Cumbria, the county immediately north of the one in which I live); the gunman was from an isolated rural area, which is where the majority of firearms ownership exists due to the genuine needs of agricultural communities. We have, on average, 2.3 gun-related deaths a year per million citizens (the US has 122.1) and it is hardly a stretch to suggest that ‘people not owning guns’ and ‘fewer people dying in tragedies such as this’ might just be linked.

But I digress. Interestingly enough, there are plenty of cults here too. I am inclined to believe that all humans are fairly similar and therefore, as long as contextual factors are also similar, will behave in similar ways; consequently, the actual idea of an isolated, extremist religious community is far more familiar to me than lots of people getting shot. Plus, they are really interesting; without true crime and weird cults, we probably would not have YouTube documentaries or podcasts. At least not the ones I like. So, with that in mind, I pre-ordered Council of Nine’s Davidian, keen to experience something that sound-tracked the human need to belong to something at almost any cost, and feasted my ears on the two pre-release tracks until the whole thing dropped.

Council of Nine sits just on the inside-edge of my dark ambient preferences. Whilst they are by no means space ambient, in the same way as Alphaxone or Sabled Sun’s Signals albums, there is certainly an astral, otherworldly element that is not present in more Gothic, dystopian-future, occult or nature-focused projects. This makes it something that I probably would not have bothered with, were it not for the fact that Cryo Chamber released it; indeed, it was only down to a sale that I picked up Exit Earth and realised on what I had been missing out.

This is the second of Maximillian Olivier’s cult-centric works. The aforementioned Exit Earth, which focused on the Heaven’s Gate gnostic sci-fi millenarianist cult, and his previous output, including hefty contributions to the excellent Tomb series and a stand-out track on 2016’s Locus Arcadia collaboration with fellow Cryo Chamber luminaries Randal Collier-Ford, Flowers for Bodysnatchers and God Body Disconnect, is definitely worth listening to. I would heartily recommend all of it. If you are new to Council of Nine or dark ambient as a whole, Davidian makes for a good starting point. It is classic dark ambient stuff – big on drones, ominous sub-bass and soaring pads that create a fully immersive experience. Not only is it classic dark ambient, it is also a classic Cryo Chamber album in that it is truly cinematic. The story of the Waco Siege is well known (and if you are not familiar with it, there is always Google) so, unlike ‘fictional’ albums, there was already a story here. All it needed was a score. For even attempting this, Olivier should be respected; multiple bands and artists I otherwise enjoy attempt to tackle sensitive and controversial topics and end up looking crass or irreverent. Not so here.

Unlike the sadness of wanting to leave an unkind world that flows through Exit Earth, the ghosts represented in Davidian’s seven tracks are full of anger. The Waco siege made people angry (none more so than Timothy McVeigh, who later carried out the Oklahoma City bombing) due to the inconsistencies in the testimonies of ATF and FBI agents, amongst other things, and this is evident throughout. I do not know whose hands are being referred to in track 3 (‘Blood on Your Hands’) but the rumbles underneath the airy drones are not pleasant sounds; to me, they are the sounds of people who truly believe that they have the answers, that a hitherto hidden truth has been revealed to them, and that the world is at fault for ignoring or ridiculing them.

The final three tracks are a tour de force. The sounds that build and swirl are (almost) choral in nature; hinting at, but in no way lifting from, raison d’être at his finest. I am well aware that this is something of a lofty comparison, but I think that it is deserved. To check that I was not just hyperbolically gushing, I switched from Davidian to Enthralled by the Wind of Loneliness by the aforementioned Swedish trailblazer and I stand by what I have written; this is very good indeed. Whether we will still be playing it in 25 years, I do not know, but I do know that if the genre continues to evolve as it has done in the last quarter of a century, we will be listening to something that still sounds fresh and exciting.

So, again, Cryo Chamber and Council of Nine knock it for six/out of the park (or choose your own geographically-appropriate idiom) with an album that fans of all different aspects of the genre can unite around and use to convert others who ask “what are those weird spooky noises you listen to instead of music?” Once you have done that, start a sweepstakes on which bunch of extremist fanatics Olivier is going to tackle next. You will have people hooked in no time.

Like this:

Here is a list: Ruptured World, a Dronny Darko collaboration with RNGMNN (who, it turns out, has been knocking out music for nearly two decades under various monikers), God Body Disconnect, Sphäre Sechs, Alphaxone, Metatron Omega, Ager Sonus, Flowers for Bodysnatchers, a collaboration between Ugasanie and Dronny Darko (again), Mount Shrine, Tomb of Ordeals and Dead Melodies.

What is it? It is a list of releases Cryo Chamber has put out in 2019 alone, alongside its annual ‘Dark Ambient of…’ installment for the previous year. The sheer range of styles is impressive too; compare Alphaxone and Metatron Omega, or any other two artists from the list above, and then make the oft-uttered claim that dark ambient is repetitive. The point I am making is that Cryo Chamber is probably the single most important label in the dark ambient universe. Certainly, the frequency and regularity of releases is surprising, but even more so when you consider the exceptional quality control and attention to detail for which label boss Simon Heath is famous.

On to this album then – Memory 417 by In Quantum. This is something of a rarity in that it appears to be the work of a brand new, hitherto unknown artist: one Eric Peterson. There are multiple Eric Petersons listed on Discogs, probably the most famous of whom is the founder of thrash metallers Testament. I doubt this is the same guy, but it would be very cool if it was. A new artist on the label is always intriguing because of the unknown quantity they represent; therefore, my ritual of pre-ordering and listening to the pre-release tracks was even more exciting than usual. The Cryo Chamber blurb was enticing too:

From the website:

This Cyberpunk Ambient album from In Quantum takes you to the mega cities of the future.

“Early Spring 2074 Some say the old days were different. Before cybernetics and the transhumanist revolution. Before the megacorps bought us and our nations, our hopes and our dreams. People back then did not live, work, eat and sleep their lives away within the towering megacorp arcologies. These days only the lucky do so.

Before the megacorps developed the semantic networks, there were us – soulless prototypes with imprinted memories and so cybernetically enhanced that we verge ever on cyber-psychosis. Due to our post-human DNA, programmed for resilience, we work and live in areas where Humans cannot – like Sector 417. A quarantined and irradiated zone where we protect and maintain the filtration, power and sewage systems of the Mega-City. The nuclear fallout from the conflicts of the 50’s is mostly cleaned up thanks to us, though you would never know it.

Water is scarce, and the first war over it is already brewing. We see, but lack the capacity to care. The word Humanity now feels on the tongue like some long-lost dream. A vision of freedom and serenity, turned to coarse sand on our pallets.

We see the riots from up here, red smoke and gunfire as anti-transhumanist chants peal through the city. Humans that are disenfranchised, without value in a new world where semantic networks connect the soulless, making them smarter and more effective. What is a single brain compared to thousands? Sometime recently we diverged from the evolutionary path of the many, and now seem land-locked into evolving into a single mind. A single mind at war with itself and all of creation. A single mind ready to disembowel itself to cut the cancer out.

To cut us out.”

Warm analogue bass, textural soundspaces and cinematic build ups combine for a unique look into the future of mankind.

However, this could be as interesting as it likes and it would not get read again, were the music not also really, really interesting. Luckily it is. The first track, ‘Anno MMLXXIV’, opens with a horrible groan and a distorted drone reminiscent of Dronny Darko’s terrifying Cryo Chamber debut, Outer Tehom. From then on in, the listener is treated to a lot – soaring synths, increasingly desperate spoken word passages, sub-bass, dark beats, weird arpeggios, sonic booms and the general sense that this is not the work of an inexperienced, new composer. It is assured and confident and refuses to stay safely within the confines of one sub-genre. It has the experimental nature of someone with enough behind them to take risks and also the expertise to pull it off in a way that makes you think ‘what was that!?’ at the same time as feeling that it all fits together seamlessly.

There are still some familiarities to hang on to – the aforementioned Dronny Darko and Sabled Sun to name a couple, but this is, more than anything else, a work that is absolutely bursting at the seams with originality. It is not background music; it requires concentration and repeated listening in order to be fully appreciated. It also reflects the story promised by the description above. The beginning is full of anticipation and it moves to a frantic middle before dropping into a despondent, moribund ending. It is, in short, fantastic.

I have bought all of Cryo Chamber’s releases so far this year and this is the best of the bunch, in my humble opinion. It is varied, wholly original and, what is more, would serve as a perfect introduction to the genre for the uninitiated. It also seems to be representative of Cryo Chamber in 2019 – varied and ultimately ready to break new ground whilst remaining true to its roots. More from In Quantum would be warmly welcomed – I suspect Eric Peterson is only just getting started.

*A quick note on the Sabled Sun connection – the story as detailed on the website suggests a possible link to Sabled Sun’s 21xx universe. This is uncannily similar to the link between Dronny Darko (yet again!) and protoU’s superb collaboration album Earth Songs and the aforementioned creation of Simon Heath. If so, this album would sit, rather interestingly, between tracks 6 and 7 (‘Singularity [2045 AD]’ and ‘Leaving Earth [2135 AD]’) of that Earth Songs album. This is borne out by the date given for this album, being “Early Spring 2074”. I’ll just leave that there…